The group that Vitter wants to give $100,000 of our tax money to has quite an interesting history. It was founded by Tony Perkins, how the head of the Family Research Council, the political wing of Focus on the Family, in 1998. Guess how he may have built up the membership for this group? By purchasing the mailing list from a KKK group:

In 1996 Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,500 for his mailing list. At the time, Perkins was the campaign manager for a right-wing Republican candidate for the US Senate in Louisiana. The Federal Election Commission fined the campaign Perkins ran $3,000 for attempting to hide the money paid to Duke.

But that’s not all. Even more recently than that, he has spoken to white supremacist groups:

Four years ago, Perkins addressed the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), America’s premier white supremacist organization, the successor to the White Citizens Councils, which battled integration in the South.

One need only look at the statement of principles for this group to understand exactly where they’re coming from. That statement declares America to be a “Christian Nation”, speaks out against all non-European immigration and says that they “oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind.” Not much ambiguity there.

And it’s highly unlikely that Perkins didn’t know who he was addressing. The Republican National Committee has specifically called the CCC a racist group and so has the Conservative Political Action Committee. After past scandals have broken out over other Republican politicians, like Bob Barr, Trent Lott and George Allen, addressing CCC events, there’s no way that Perkins didn’t know exactly who he was speaking to and what they stood for.